Name: harvesting sperm and artificial insemination of mice
Uploaded: 2007-04-28T00:00:00
Description: Watch this Scientific Journal Video about Harvesting Sperm and Artificial Insemination of Mice at JoVE.com

<p class="jove_content">I would like to thank Mike Dewey from the Peromyscus Genetic Stock Center for his valuable insight, patience, and knowledge on rodent reproduction.</p>

<p class="jove_title">Artificial Insemination</p>
<p class="jove_content">Artificial insemination is used instead of natural matings to increase the chances that all the females have will become pregnant. 2 male was used for every 1 superovulated females or a female known to be in estrous. The caudae epididymides from mature male mice were placed in a 9% milk suspension and sliced open with 18 gauge needles. The sperm was allowed to swim freely for a few minutes and then the epididymides were taken from the mixture. The suspension was evaluated...

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">	
		
		<div>
		<table border="1">
		<thead>
		<tr>
		<th>Material Name</th>
		<th>Type</th>
		<th>Company</th>
		<th>Catalogue Number</th>
		<th>Comment</th>
		</tr>
		</thead>
		<tbody>
		
<tr>
<td>Petri Dish</td>
<td>Tool</td>
<td>Fisher</td>
<td>08-772-30 </td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<tr>
<td>18 gauge needle</td>
<td>Tool</td>
<td>Becton Dickinson</td>
<td>305195</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<tr>
<td>Powdered milk</td>
<td>Reagent</td>
<td>Any Grocery store</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<tr>
<td>1 ml syringe</td>
<td>Tool</td>
<td>National Scientific Company</td>
<td>S7510-1</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<tr>
<td>Forceps</td>
<td>Tool</td>
<td>Roboz</td>
<td>RS-5060</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<tr>
<td>Scissors</td>
<td>Tool</td>
<td>Roboz</td>
<td>RS-5882</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<tr>
<td>Dulbecco's Phosphate Buffered Saline</td>
<td>Reagent</td>
<td>Gibco</td>
<td>14200-075</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<tr>
<td>22 gauge blunt needle</td>
<td>Tool</td>
<td>Give to me</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>		</tbody>
		</table>
		</div>
			<div>
					</div>
		

harvesting sperm and artificial insemination of mice

<p class="jove_content">Rodents of the genus Peromyscus (deer mice) are the most prevalent native North American mammals.  Peromyscus species are used in a wide range of research including toxicology, epidemiology, ecology, behavioral, and genetic studies.  Here they provide a useful model for demonstrations of artificial insemination. </p>

<p class="jove_content">Methods similar to those displayed here have previously been used in several deer mouse studies, yet no detailed protocol has been published.  Here we demonstrate the basic method of artificial insemination.  This method entails extracting the testes from the rodent, then isolating the sperm from the epididymis and vas deferens.  The mature sperm, now in a milk mixture, are placed in the female&#x2019;s reproductive tract at the time of ovulation.  Fertilization is counted as day 0 for timing of embryo development.  Embryos can then be retrieved at the desired time-point and manipulated.</p>

<p class="jove_content">Artificial insemination can be used in a variety of rodent species where exact embryo timing is crucial or hard to obtain.  This technique is vital for species or strains (including most Peromyscus) which may not mate immediately and/or where mating is hard to assess.  In addition, artificial insemination provides exact timing for embryo development either in mapping developmental progress and/or transgenic work.  Reduced numbers of animals can be used since fertilization is guaranteed.  This method has been vital to furthering the Peromyscus system, and will hopefully benefit others as well.</p>

Watch this Scientific Journal Video about Harvesting Sperm and Artificial Insemination of Mice at JoVE.com

Harvesting Sperm and Artificial Insemination of Mice

<p class="jove_content">This protocol demonstrates methods for extracting sperm from the testes of males and then inseminating female mice.   This procedure is useful when precise time is needed in developmental studies as well as transgenic work.</p>

Rodents of the genus Peromyscus (deer mice) are the most prevalent native North American mammals.  Peromyscus species are used in a wide range of research ...

Research

JoVE Journal

Biology

Preparation of Artificial Bilayers for Electrophysiology Experiments

Planar lipid bilayers, also called artificial lipid bilayers, allow you to study ion-conducting channels in a well-defined environment. These bilayers can ...

Harvesting and Preparing <em>Drosophila</em> Embryos for Electrophysiological Recording and Other Procedures

Harvesting and Preparing Drosophila Embryos for Electrophysiological Recording and Other Procedures

Drosophila is a premier genetic model for the study of both embryonic development and functional neuroscience. Traditionally, these fields are quite ...

Isolation and <em>In vitro</em> Activation of <em>Caenorhabditis elegans</em> Sperm

Isolation and In vitro Activation of Caenorhabditis elegans Sperm

Males and hermaphrodites are the two naturally found sexual forms in the nematode C. elegans. The amoeboid sperm are produced by both males and ...

Mouse Sperm Cryopreservation and Recovery using the I&middot;Cryo Kit

Thousands of new genetically modified (GM) strains of mice have been created since the advent of transgenesis and knockout technologies.  Many of these ...

Assessing Differences in Sperm Competitive Ability in <em>Drosophila</em>

Assessing Differences in Sperm Competitive Ability in Drosophila

Competition among conspecific males for fertilizing the ova is one of the mechanisms of sexual selection, i.e. selection that operates on maximizing the ...

<em>In Vitro</em> Reconstitution of Light-harvesting Complexes of Plants and Green Algae

In Vitro Reconstitution of Light-harvesting Complexes of Plants and Green Algae

In plants and green algae, light is captured by the light-harvesting complexes (LHCs), a family of integral membrane proteins that coordinate chlorophylls ...

Avian Semen Collection by Cloacal Massage and Isolation of DNA from Sperm

Collection of semen may be useful for a wide range of applications including studies involving sperm quality, sperm telomere dynamics, and epigenetics. ...

Fish Sperm Assessment Using Software and Cooling Devices

For gamete quality evaluation, there are innovative, rapid, and quantitative techniques that can provide useful data for aquaculture. Computerized systems ...

Harvesting and Disaggregation: An Overlooked Step in Biofilm Methods Research

Biofilm methods consist of four distinct steps: growing the biofilm in a relevant model, treating the mature biofilm, harvesting the biofilm from the ...

Artificial Intelligence Approaches to Assessing Primary Cilia

Cilia are microtubule based cellular appendages that function as signaling centers for a diversity of signaling pathways in many mammalian cell types. ...